Lizzie could see herself lying on the bench. People started to come towards her. She sat up. The tape stopped.

“Three minutes,” she repeated. She looked at him. “And Johnny?”

DI Cook looked at her for the longest time. “There is no further footage of him,” he said. “Not on the Embankment, not at Blackfriars station, not anywhere else we have found.” He waited, and when Lizzie said nothing, he sighed.

“The footage of the explosion—if that is what it was—has been analysed,” DI Cook said. “They think it was a type of calcium and strontium.”

“I’m sorry,” Lizzie said. “I never studied chemistry.”

“Simply put,” DI Cook said, “they use it in fireworks. It’s very volatile.” He got up and stretched. “There was no firework residue found at the scene, however, and none of the witnesses reported a smell of sulphur or anything else unusual.” He leaned on the desk close to Lizzie. “It’s a mystery, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. “An explosion you say you have no memory of, with a substance that seems untraceable and a companion who’s missing.” He glanced across at the lawyer. “We’ve got some further questions but I’d like Ms Kingdom to have a bit of time to think about this first.”

“You have to tell me what’s going on,” the lawyer, who was called Rebecca, hissed at Lizzie as they stood in front of the sink in the ladies’ room. Lizzie caught sight of her reflection in the harshly lit mirror and winced.

“I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me,” Rebecca went on. “All this silence isn’t helpful.”

“I’m silent because I can’t explain,” Lizzie said. “I’ve told everything I know.”

The lawyer looked baffled and angry. “That can’t be true. None of this makes any sense.”

“Tell me about it,” Lizzie said tiredly.

It all began again. They told her that they had found Johnny’s phone in her flat. Lizzie couldn’t understand how it had got there. Johnny had told her he must have dropped the phone in the car on his way to see her. She told the police this; they asked her whose car he had been in. Lizzie could not answer, did not know. Johnny had not said. She puzzled over it for hours; the only people who had been in the flat after Johnny were Arthur and Anna. Had one of them deliberately planted the phone there and if so why? Did either—or both—of them hate her so much because of Amelia that they would want to deliberately throw suspicion on her? Anna barely knew her. Could she really be motivated by such hatred for someone she had met only once, as a child? Lizzie supposed it was possible if Anna had been as protective of Amelia as she seemed to be of Johnny. It was Arthur, though, who troubled her more. He’s tricked you, said the traitorous voice at the back of her mind, the demon that so often planted its barbs when she felt at her most vulnerable. She knew Arthur hated Dudley. She had felt the depth of that visceral hatred. She also knew Arthur’s feelings towards her were equivocal at best. When it came to a war between logic and instinct was it foolish of her to trust in an affinity she had never sought? She didn’t know. It felt as though there wasn’t much that she did know any more and it was easy to become paranoid in those long, lonely hours.